LG-Nortel, Accton Sign Joint Venture Agreement

Telecommunications giants LG-Nortel and Accton announce plans for a joint venture in North America that would offer voice and data solutions to cost-conscious businesses.

LG-Nortel, a Korean global telecommunications solution
provider, and Accton Technology, a Taiwanese global
telecommunications equipment company, announced they signed an agreement to
form a joint venture that will offer voice and data solutions for North
American small to medium-size businesses and large enterprises.

Jae Ryung Lee, CEO of LG-Norte,l and A.J. Huang, chairman
of Accton Group, signed the agreement in Hsinchu, Taiwan. LG-Nortel will own a
60 percent share in the joint venture, and Accton will own 40 percent, according
to a joint release issued by the companies. The new venture will be tentatively
named Edgecore Networks, which was a subsidiary of Accton and a specialized
North American sales company for network solutions. The joint venture will be
established by mid-February from headquarters in Irvine,
Calif., the release noted.

Lee characterized the venture as "another bold step" for the
company in North America. "Like LG-Nortel, Accton is an innovative leader
in its market," he said. "This partnership will provide significant new
opportunities to reinforce our brand, increasing our global competitiveness and
helping our customers embrace the future opportunities and challenges of the
converged communications market." The joint venture was created to combine the SMB voice and
data product expertise of LG-Nortel with Edgecore Networks' marketing and sales
capability, SMB channels and logistics skills. The companies touted the
combination of these capabilities as positioning the joint venture to take full
charge of the SMB and enterprise equipment business of LG-Nortel and Accton
across the USA and Canada.
Both companies will cooperate in all aspects of their businesses including
research and development, manufacturing, marketing, new business development
and brand use. "The establishment of this joint venture will
significantly enhance LG-Nortel's presence in North
America," said Leith Tessy, COO of
LG-Nortel. "Businesses have more complex communications challenges than
ever, and the combination of our companies' respective strengths will provide
an unparalleled opportunity to help them meet those challenges." Huang said the demands of North American customers are
directly connected to the overall trend towards global communication. "The
brand value and voice platform technology that LG-Nortel provides, paired with
Accton's distribution and manufacturing capacity, and our local network reach,
will make this joint venture a powerful combination that will deliver
significant benefits for companies across North America,"
he said.

Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.